ShopPosts Tagged ‘Hunting’
October 2011
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011
Are you counting the days till October too?
As the snow falls out the window behind me again today, I can’t help but think about pheasant hunting season. Apparently, I’m not alone. According to our website’s analytics, the most commonly searched term driving pheasant hunters to our website the last few weeks is “October 2011.”
My hunch is that folks are already planning their 2011 fall pheasant hunting calendar. While not all states have announced their 2011 pheasant seasons yet, I’ve been able to find opening day dates online for most of the top pheasant hunting destinations. So here you go!
2011 Pheasant Hunting Opening Days
(These dates are tentative, please be sure to check your state’s regulations)
Colorado Not announced till July
Iowa Saturday, October 29
Kansas Saturday, November 12
Montana Saturday, October 8
Minnesota Saturday, October 15
Nebraska Saturday, October 29
North Dakota Saturday, October 8
Ohio Not announced till July
South Dakota Saturday, October 15
Wisconsin Saturday, October 15
The Pointer is written by Bob St.Pierre, Pheasants Forever’s Vice President of Marketing.
Farewell Wolf–My Hunting Partner Since ‘95
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010
PF Editor Mark Herwig and Wolf, his PF hunting companion of over 14 years, near the end of the trail this summer.
Last fall, while hunting on southern Minnesota’s Lake Geneva, I dropped a wood duck over the decoys. I gently pulled my springer, Wolf, from the canoe and pointed him toward the wood duck. Off he swam without hesitation. He made a perfect retrieve, as Wolf has for over 14 years. It turned out that was his last retrieve.
Appropriately, Wolf’s first retrieve was a mallard in North Dakota. He was seven-months-old then a full of vinegar. That dawn, Wolf leaped into the lake and broke thin ice all the way out to get that duck. On shore, his eyes were wild with predatory lust and he wouldn’t bring the duck to me! Wolf was more wild than domestic, I often said, as did others.
Wolf hunted with me from Washington State to New York; from Kansas to Montana and everywhere else in between. He once sat patiently as I drove over 5,500 miles on one three-week trip for the Pheasants Forever Journal. He likewise sat patiently in his kennel many days and nights waiting for me to come home from work.
Wolf had three great retirement years, kept company by my new wife of four years, who doted over him, and a new springer, Hunter, who kept him challenged.
The retrieves are over now. Wolf is at rest in my backyard. I dug his grave last Tuesday, sat down and just sobbed. His life was over and a chapter in mine was done too. At 55-years-old, I spent my best years hunting with Wolf. I laid his head to rest on a Pheasants Forever t-shirt in tribute to his service.
This summer I could see the writing on the wall and poured some concrete in a shoebox and pushed Wolf’s fat front feat into it. I them scrawled his name in the concrete. The makeshift headstone will mark his grave long after I’m gone. I also put an old duck decoy on his grave; he and I just loved duck hunting. As I was wont to say of my old buddy, the last thing many a pheasant or duck saw in this world was Wolf bearing down on them. He was a singularly relentless retriever.
I put some brown-eyed Susans from our front yard on his grave too. They are fading now, but my memory of him never will.
I thought it appropriate that Wolf went off to the happy hunting grounds in autumn, our favorite time of year. Farewell Wolf. Thanks for everything.
Deer Season is on the Horizon – and Where You Find Deer, You’ll Find Pheasants Too
Monday, August 16th, 2010
This big bruiser likes CRP grass just like pheasants do - and with deer bow season coming, you'd do well to hunt CRP habitat.
While pheasant season is still a ways off, the month of September is just around the corner and that means whitetail bow season for many states.
Have you ever been pheasant hunting a big Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) field, or other upland haunt for that matter, and come across deer? Happens to me all the time. PF members, after all, hunt whitetail second only to pheasants.
It’s no accident pheasants and deer are found together – the two share a common habitat: grasslands. Deer love hiding out in those big CRP fields – and munching on the food plots often planted in or near CRP! It is very secure habitat for them.
PF members won’t be surprised, then, to know that seven of the top 10 Boone & Crockett Club (2000-2009) record book whitetail states, including PF’s home state, are in the pheasant range.
State and No. of B&C Record Book Whitetails
- Illinois (539)
- Wisconsin (464)
- Iowa (349)
- Kentucky (312)
- Ohio (309)
- Missouri (285)
- Kansas (257)
- Saskatchewan (256)
- Indiana (241)
- Minnesota (193)
If you want to keep your deer herd strong, and of course, the pheasants, be sure to encourage your elected officials to support the CRP and other federal Farm Bill conservation programs – and join Pheasants Forever today!
Pheasant Hunting, Guns and Dogs Galore — The Fall Pheasants Forever Journal is on the Way!
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
Put yourself in this photo! This is the cover for the upcoming Fall Issue of PF Journal, which mails August 20. (photo by Montana's Denver Bryan)
The time of year we have all waited for is just around the corner – pheasant hunting season — and we have its adventurous spirit captured for you in the Fall issue of PF Journal.
Here’s a preview:
Camera sharp-shooter Denver Bryan has a crack pheasant hunting photo essay on tap – with a different look. Denver also has the cover photo this issue – one happy looking yellow Lab next to two fat roosters!
Next up is Tom Davis’ Gun Dog column on point honoring. I love this line in the story: “You want that dog to react the same way you would if you found Brigitte Bardot in your bed.”
Then there’s my feature on North Dakota’s Southwestern Chapter. Located just south of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, this chapter knows how to create habitat, produce roosters and put them in the game bag. It was a rollicking good hunt put on by some fun guys.
Dave Books looks back on some of his most memorable pheasant hunts in Longspur’s Lair; Don Thomas weaves an engaging story about hard work and one bird hunts; then Davis winds things up with Memory Marks: The pheasants of my mind, and the dogs that put them there.
To help choose that new shotgun, we have our 6th Annual Pheasants Forever Shotgun Review featuring 16 shotguns, photos, details, prices and comments from our shooters who put them through the ropes in Omaha, Nebraska earlier this summer. There’s also a piece on new pheasant ammo and reloading, which I hope you’ll find useful and interesting.
Of course, we also have our usual compliment of conservation articles, doings at Pheasants Forever national, our great catalog section of merchandise and all those pheasant lodges and more in our Goods & Services section.
It’s an issue I’m very proud to have my name on the masthead.
If you’d like to get each and every issue of the Pheasants Forever Journal delivered to your mailbox, please join Pheasants Forever today.
Air Guitar – Air Shooting? — Why not!
Friday, August 6th, 2010
Air shooting makes good, inexpensive and frequent practice for the coming wing shooting seasons.
As hunting season approaches, first dove in three weeks then other game, I start thinking about sharpening up my shooting skills.
Sure, I go to the trap range a few times, read some shooting tips, such as the fine entries from PF’s shooting writer John Taylor (Ready, Aim, Fire! in PF Journal) and I also “air shoot.”
Yes, I “air shoot.”
You’ve all heard of air guitar, well air shooting is as much fun, practical and effective.
What is air shooting? Well, it’s a simple, free and very accessible way to sharpen up your eye and shooting timing. Say I’m on a walk, just walking to the car, or in my backyard and bird flies by, any bird, I pull up, swing and fire, saying “pow” out loud or to myself as if I’m packing a real gun.
Air shooting helps my real shooting when the time comes afield on upland game and waterfowl. This faux technique doesn’t require any gear, you can do it anywhere (that is, if you don’t mind some odd looks now and then, but I mostly air shoot when alone), anytime and any bird will do. Let me tell you, if you can get ahead of some of those fast flying “LBBs” (little brown birds), you can get on a pheasant or duck as well.
Now, some people might think this practice odd, but I’m not the only real hunter who casually follows this practice. Dedicated hunter and PF public relations bons vi·vants Anthony Hauck air shoots too. “Hard cores do what they must,” Big Cat (Hauck’s office nickname) remarked.
So, give air shooting a try next time you’re outside and a bird flies by. After pulling up and swinging on a few dozen birds, you’ll notice a difference when pheasant or quail season rolls around.
“Was that a hen sparrow or drake?”
The Mobile Hunting Shack, a Landowner Buddy and CRP
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
The author's vintage 1959 Shasta house trailer allows him to hunt remote areas where little lodging keeps others away.
Years ago, I purchased a 1959 Shasta house trailer from my late neighbor Elmer. (A Navy man in WWII, he drove landing craft during the invasion of Anzio, Italy, and saw dangerous action in North Africa and elsewhere).
The vintage rig’s 17 feet has a beautiful wood veneer interior, bunk bed, booth-style kitchen table, propane furnace, oven with two burner stove, water, sink, closet, cupboards and lots of hunting pictures on the walls. The toilet is the nearest bush.
I love having the trailer because it allows me to hunt an isolated area of North Dakota that has little public lodging – which makes it an even better area to hunt. For several years, we’ve never even seen another car during our hunts. The area is well worth venturing to: in one square mile we always bag pheasants, numerous species of puddle and diver ducks, sandhill cranes, tundra swans (special permit only), sharptails, Huns, dark and light geese and doves. It is a wing shooter’s paradise. I’ve hunted the area for 14 years.
The landowner, Chris, is now letting me park the trailer next to an unused house his late uncle once occupied years ago. He’s letting me plug into the electricity and use the home’s bathroom. Now, my friends and I can stop in for hunting trips with all the conveniences. The best thing is I’m out in the country and far away from town.
On previous trips to Chris’ in the “mobile hunting shack” he had us park on a flat spot where a house once stood in the middle of a sea of grass. There, at night, we’ve heard coyotes howling, crane and geese calling as they pass beneath the stars and been awakened by spectacular displays of Northern Lights. Nothing beats staying in the country when you’re a big city dweller (Minneapolis-St. Paul). Chris understands my love of solitude.
I once offered Chris money for his kindness, but he declined. Instead, he offers us help. “You get in trouble with the weather or anything, just come over to the house. I don’t want you guys freezing out here,” he said once.
I used to bring him whiskey until one year, when I brought another bottle, he chuckled and said, “Heck, Mark, I’ve barely dipped into the one you gave me last year.” Since then, I’ve given him other gifts.
Ours is a gentleman’s agreement about parking the trailer. “It might blow over in the wind,” he warned.
“If it does Chris, I’ll be out to clean up the mess. You get tired of looking at it, just tell me and I’ll come out and take it away – no questions.”
That was good enough assurance for Chris. He knows my word is good: all these years I’ve closed his gates, stayed on field trails while driving, avoided his cattle when shooting and promised not to give him any ducks to eat (a condition of my continued presence on his land).
Chris knows I’m a PF conservationist. He’s always wanted to enroll his land in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), but his county’s acreage limit was maxed years ago.
I called Chris the other day to make sure he knows about the Aug. 2-27 CRP sign-up. I hope he gets in. I can just imagine what the already-excellent hunting there will be like if he turns all his land to grass! Good luck buddy!
A Change at Ole Olson’s Farm
Friday, July 30th, 2010
Pheasant hunting changed forever when the CRP began back in 1985. What will the next quarter century bring for CRP? Its destiny is up to us. (Photo illustration member submitted)
From the day I became a hunter in the 1960s, I hunted Ole Olson’s farm in southern Minnesota’s Freeborn County. I shot my first goose on his wetland, which thankfully is now a Wildlife Management Area.
And since the day I became a hunter, the field across from Olson’s big white farmhouse was in corn or beans… that is, until one day in about 1986, I figure.
That autumn, I pulled up to Olson’s house and to my utter surprise and bewilderment, that field was covered in tall grasses. I stopped and spooked a flock of pheasants into the field not 20 yards in.
I had permission to hunt the field, so I jumped out, walked them up and shot two right off the bat. I was elated. Such good shooting didn’t happen too often in that heavily farmed area.
Curious, I ventured into Olson’s dairy barn to ask him what was up. Why had he let his field go instead of planting it? “Have you quit farming?” I recalled asking.
“No,” he said wiping off a cow’s teats before affixing a suction milker, “the federal government is paying some farmers to plant our tough-to-farm ground to a cover crop.”
I had never heard of such a thing, but I never forgot it either. Thus was born my consciousness of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a effort that today, nearly 25 years later, has become synonymous with upland conservation, great pheasant hunting and the rise of Pheasants Forever – for our destiny’s have been, and remain, intimately intertwined.
I imagine many a hunter has had the same experience over the past quarter century of CRP success. Lately, pheasant hunters and others are also experiencing the shock of finding their favorite CRP turned back to black dirt. In some cases, this isn’t such a bad thing: many of those old CRP fields need to be disturbed and reinvigorated as habitat for wildlife. Now that new planting and management rules apply, new acres enrolled in the August 2010 CRP signup will be much more productive for wildlife.
Perhaps someday, I’ll make it back to Olson’s field, if just to drive by and see if the grass and pheasants are still there that so changed a young hunter’s life and the organization he came to work for these past 12 years.
Note: The first CRP general signup in four years starts on Monday, August 2nd and runs through Friday, August 27th. Learn more. Help PF commemorate CRP’s 25th Anniversary by sharing your favorite CRP memories in our blog comment section.
All Hail the Quail & My favorite moments on the quail trail
Thursday, June 17th, 2010
James Dietsch, Oklahoma #89 Chapter, with a nice bobwhite. Dietsch and I had the hunt of a lifetime on a private ranch where conservation and cattle coexist thanks to an enlightened landowner. (photo by Mark Herwig)
As editor of Quail Forever Journal, I’ve studied conservation of the bird’s habitat and hunted them from Washington State to North Carolina, from Nebraska to Texas and many points in between.
Of the quail conservation and hunting enthusiasts I’ve met, many of them have one thing in common: they cherish these little, threatened birds.
The bobwhite, especially, is under the gun. It was recently voted the top most endangered (formerly) common bird in America. Because it is so threatened – its population has dropped by as much as 80 percent the last 30 years – it is so cherished. Those who steward quail know from all too many examples how quickly then can vanish from the landscape once their habitat goes south.
But, quail worship arises for other reasons, to which I can attest. If you’ve ever held a quail, especially one of those western varieties with the top plumes, you know how beautiful they are with their iridescent plumage, clownish faces and plucky personae.
Another reason for quail worship, as if you needed more, is that I believe they are THE best upland bird I’ve ever eaten. Now, pheasants, grouse, Huns and chukar are all very good eating, but the quail tops them all as table fare in my humble opinion.
From a political side of things, quail conservation and Quail Forever has also made Pheasants Forever a stronger, national organization. That means more votes, more acres, and more birds – no matter which one you prefer to chase!
So, find a place in your heart to help the poor quail. Join us (www.QuailForever.org) if you’re the joining kind. If not, do something else to help these diminutive game birds. You’ll feel better about yourself if you do.
Here’s a few of my favorite quail moments:
*Watching a bobwhite fly directly at me at eye level in a northern Missouri forest.
*Coming upon a flock of over 1,000 scaled quail in Texas as they flew away.
*Crawling through a thick, 20-foot high blackberry bramble in eastern Oregon hunting California quail.
*Traversing a southwest Florida swamp in pursuit of bobs. The area was so flat, vast and filled with wildlife it must have looked like it did 500 years ago!
*Boating up the big, gorgeous, wild Snake River in Oregon in pursuit of California’s.
*Seeing my first armadillo and roadrunner while hunting bobs in Oklahoma.
*Hunting with Fred Gutherie and Dale Rollins, two southwest quail experts. It was really a teaching expedition for me, with a shotgun as a prop.
*The look on my wife Terri’s face every time I come home with a mess of quail for the roaster. She’s loves them as much as I do!
Mom, Happy Father’s Day
Thursday, June 17th, 2010
The author's Mom shows off her shooting prowess.
Here at Pheasants Forever, Rosalie is working diligently on designing a new email blast wishing all the Dads of Pheasants Forever a “Happy Father’s Day.” I’ve also been searching the office for our video camera so Andrew and the new interns can record a Father’s Day tribute video similar to our Memorial Day Storm Report Video (unfortunately, I suspect Anthony has the video gear on vacation with him in hopes of being able to record his first 50 inch northern pike).
In any event, I’ve got Father’s Day on my mind. While my Dad certainly shouldered the majority of my introduction into the outdoors, I think it’s important not to overlook Mom’s role in developing my outdoors lifestyle.
In fact, I’d bet money on the fact that my Mom is the most accurate shot with either a rifle or shotgun in my family. My Mom also boasts the family’s largest brook trout (18.5 inches) and some of the family’s largest whitetail bucks. And, if it weren’t for Mom’s willingness to spend every summer vacation fishing out of a canoe, camping for a week at a time in a tent, or hunting each autumn for ruffed grouse down long-forgotten logging trails, then a lot of my outdoors memories wouldn’t exist.
So, this is in no way a slight on good ole Dad. As I’ve written before, I’m lucky my dad is even alive today considering his brain aneurysm and miraculous recovery. I treasure every grouse woods walk and fishing excursion with my Dad. I’m the spitting image of my old man and pretty proud of it.
However, as I work diligently to recognize the Fathers of Pheasants Forever via email and social networking mediums, I would also like to give a shout-out to the ladies. On this Father’s Day weekend, thank your Mom AND your Dad for fostering a passion to train bird dogs, flush roosters, and create habitat.
Happy Father’s Day Mom & Dad!
CRP General Sign-up on Horizon
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
CRP acres are critical to pheasant flushes like this one
If today’s blog headline grabbed you, then you are undoubtedly aware of the value CRP’s 32 million acres hold in providing habitat for a variety of wildlife species, protecting water quality, enhancing rural economies and creating access for many hunters. Add CRP’s importance to the quickly approaching September 30th deadline when more than 4.4 million acres of CRP are slated to expire, and the critical nature of our current situation begins to set in. Consequently, I have been nervously watching for signs of progress leading to the much anticipated CRP sign-up announcement. Thankfully, I’ve seen many of the signals I’ve been waiting for and the dominos appear to be falling in order.
First, the official CRP Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, required by law has been completed. The EIS clears the way for a new CRP rule, which was a hurdle for the USDA prior to announcing any new general signup. Second, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced on June 10th that up to $2 billion in funding was being directed into future CRP sign-ups and various Conservation Reserve Enhancement Programs around the country. The bottom line from this funding news is that we can now expect as many as 4 million acres being accepted during the general sign-up offering period. Those 4 million acres would be nearly double what might have been taken in without the $2 billion funding announcement.
We may not have official sign-up details at the moment, but both of these signals point toward CRP sign-up details coming soon. Stay tuned!
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